I must admit to having something of a soft spot for highly compact ATX cases. One of my personal favourites of yesteryear was the Antec LanBoy Ė a very compact and well built aluminium ATX chassis much in the vein of the PC-9 which had a lot of the features of higher specification chassis, while still being very affordable.

Sadly though, the PC-9 has been a disappointment, and itís not just the ludicrously high price thatís put us off. While the all aluminium construction and solid Lian Li build quality is there, aluminium chassis from competing manufacturers like Akasa and Cooler Master have generally better built quality.

Itís also very tricky to build a system into the PC-9 thanks to the diminutive chassis size, and Lian Li has made very little effort to improve the situation with no removable motherboard tray and half hearted attempts at cable routing and dust filtering. While the front accessed hot swap hard drive cage is a wonderful little feature thatís been well implemented with the four SATA drive hot swap PCB, itís the only feature that comes close to setting the PC-9 apart from the competition, with average overall cooling performance from a very limited cooling setup failing to justify the extravagant price tag.

While itís obvious Lian Li has tried to keep things simple with the PC-9, it ends up feeling more like a chassis designed from a checklist rather than a well thought out product in its own right. Features like cable routing, dust filtering and an adjustable fan controller have been included but are very poorly implemented and thereís little of the attention to detail that has so often made Lian Li a first choice for enthusiast cases. With the cripplingly high price only adding to its woes, the Lian Li PC-9 is a disappointing and unconvincing showing from Lian Li.